AI for School Psychologists: IEP Eligibility Drafts

AI can structure assessment data into the eligibility narrative format, but the psychologist owns clinical interpretation.

What AI does well here

• Tabulate scores into standard sections
• Draft strengths-and-needs language
• Flag missing assessment domains

What AI cannot do

• Diagnose a disability
• Determine eligibility
• Replace parent input

IDEA eligibility, FERPA, and the limits of AI in psychoeducational assessment

Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a school psychologist conducts comprehensive psychoeducational assessments to determine whether a student meets eligibility criteria for special education services. The eligibility evaluation report must integrate multiple data sources: standardized assessment scores, observations, teacher input, parent interviews, medical history, and academic records. The psychologist interprets this data and writes an eligibility narrative that either supports or does not support a specific disability category under IDEA. AI can assist meaningfully in the structural tasks: organizing scores into standard reporting tables, drafting the strengths-and-needs narrative template, and flagging assessment domains that may not have been sufficiently evaluated. These are genuinely time-consuming tasks for a school psychologist managing a large caseload. What AI must not do is determine eligibility or diagnose a disability — those clinical determinations belong to the qualified psychologist. FERPA compliance is also a hard constraint: identifiable student data (name, ID, scores associated with a specific student) should not be entered into non-FERPA-covered AI tools. The appropriate workflow is to de-identify scores before using AI to draft the narrative template, then add student-identifying information locally at the finalization step.

• IDEA eligibility requires integrating multiple data sources; AI can organize and structure this data
• AI can draft eligibility narrative templates but the psychologist makes all clinical determinations
• FERPA requires de-identifying student data before using non-FERPA-covered AI tools
• Parent input and clinical observation cannot be substituted with AI-generated content